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Pirimze

This film shows social and visual changes affecting Pirimze, a six-floor building from the Soviet era, built especially to house repair and maintenance services. The theme unfolds to a broader picture and shows what has been happening in Georgia since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

OFFICIAL SELECTIONS: Visions Du Réel/ Vesoul's International Film Festival of Asian Cinema/ Tbilisi International Film Festival/ CineDoc

“Pirimze” A Place transforming to a Non-Place

Starting as a curious journey though the labyrinths of Pirimze, a six-floor Georgian building from the Soviet era, and observing fascinating skills performed by craftsmen who used to work there, the story moves beyond the façade of the newly renovated business center “Pirimze Plaza” which replaced Pirimze and questions the need and motives of this transformation.

The story of Pirimze is told by the building itself. It touches upon the '70s, when this luxuriously designed edifice served as an exemplary building; how it made an incredible amount of money in the '80s and it also talks about the '90s, when it decayed and operated in an improvised and shady way.

After the independence of Georgia, just as the Soviet Union collapsed and broke up into different countries, Pirimze "exploded" and smaller workshops with identical name sprung up in the surrounding neighborhood.